News Coverage
Electric vehicles are not the answer for Ohio’s shuttered GM plant
Friday March 8, 2019
Article Highlights
- The final Chevrolet Cruze sedan rolled down the assembly line at General Motors’ Lordstown, Ohio, plant on Wednesday, putting 1,500 workers out of work or looking for transfers and leaving local officials scrambling for ways to re-open the plant.
- Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said he will keep pressing GM to find a new product for the plant to build, possibly an electric vehicle: “GM says it will produce 20 new electric vehicles by 2023 and, at the very least, one of those should be in Lordstown,” Portman told the media, adding that not all GM EVs should be built in China.
- An electric vehicle for Lordstown is no panacea. The best job security for workers at auto assembly plants is to build compelling vehicles that consumers really want to buy and that generate decent profits for the manufacturer.
The Hill, By Michelle Krebs, March 8, 2019 — The final Chevrolet Cruze sedan rolled down the assembly line at General Motors’ Lordstown, Ohio, plant on Wednesday, putting 1,500 workers out of work or looking for transfers and leaving local officials scrambling for ways to re-open the plant.
Located midway between Cleveland, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pa., the plant is the first of five GM assembly operations in North America scheduled to end production by the end of 2020.
Once employing some 3,000 workers, the Lordstown plant had experienced constant production cutbacks and employee layoffs in recent years due to slumping sales as consumers opted for sport-utility vehicles instead of traditional cars like the Chevrolet Cruze.